文章基本信息

标题：Variety overload
作者：Mona Doyle
期刊名称：The Shopper Report
印刷版ISSN：1077-5099
出版年度：2005
卷号：Dec 2005
出版社：Consumer Network, Inc,

Variety overload

Mona Doyle

Having a huge variety of cheeses, cookies, cakes, breads, soups, sauces, wines, and ice cream flavors makes sense as well as palate pleasure. It's rather like the richness of biodiversity--the wonder of flowers, the infinitely unique miracle of snowflakes. In other categories, mind-numbing variety sometimes turns happy shoppers into irritable grumps. An editorial in the last issue of Consumer Reports said that: "More than half of the 28 kinds of Coke and Pepsi are diet." I immediately wonder: "What have I been missing?" in the same breath as I say: "That's ridiculous."

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"The right to choice" was one of the early rights that consumer advocates identified and shoppers everywhere applauded. Now, a great many shoppers agree that variety itself isn't what makes a store work for them.

* "The choices have to be real."

* "There's something wrong with the system when they have 600 kinds of mustard on the shelf (I'm exaggerating but not all that much) and run out of bagels."

* "Sometimes the variety is just confusing. I actually had trouble buying ketchup the last time I shopped."

Trouble buying ketchup? That comment prompted me to take a look at the ketchup aisle on my next visit to a supermarket. It's not hard to see why a shopper could be confused, even if she just wants a bottle of Heinz. Not counting the several different sizes or the super-spicy options or the purple and green options, I actually found six versions of plain old Heinz Ketchup, bottles that I guessed to have the same contents but carried any of six different product names depending, I think, on brand managers' creativity and the fine points of packaging:

1. Heinz Ketchup

2. Tomato Ketchup

3. Thick & Rich, Since 1876

4. Tomato Ketchup/No wait/No mess

5. Ore-Ida Extra Crispy Fries Dig Me

6. Silly Squirts

No wonder shopping is getting harder and harder! I understand that #5 is just for fun, but what about the others? Does #4, "No wait/No mess," pour faster than regulars #1 and #2? Is #4 thinner and therefore not as rich and thick as version #3? Am I supposed to call the company to get the answer?

Happy Holidays, Mona Doyle